Geoffrey B Robinson Popular Books

Geoffrey B Robinson Biography & Facts

Large-scale killings and civil unrest primarily targeting members of the Communist Party (PKI) were carried out in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966. Other affected groups included alleged communist sympathisers, Gerwani women, trade unionists, ethnic Javanese Abangan, ethnic Chinese, atheists, so-called "unbelievers", and alleged leftists in general. According to the most widely published estimates at least 500,000 to 1.2 million people were killed,: 3  with some estimates going as high as two to three million. The atrocities, sometimes described as a genocide or politicide, were instigated by the Indonesian Army under Suharto. Research and declassified documents demonstrate the Indonesian authorities received support from foreign countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.: 157  The killings began as an anti-communist purge following a controversial attempted coup d'état by the 30 September Movement. It was a pivotal event in the transition to the "New Order" and the elimination of PKI as a political force, with impacts on the global Cold War. The upheavals led to the fall of President Sukarno and the commencement of Suharto's three-decade authoritarian presidency. The abortive coup attempt released pent-up communal hatreds in Indonesia; these were fanned by the Indonesian Army, which quickly blamed the PKI. Additionally, the intelligence agencies of the United States, United Kingdom and Australia engaged in black propaganda campaigns against Indonesian communists. During the Cold War, the United States, its government, and its Western allies had the goal of halting the spread of communism and bringing countries into the sphere of Western Bloc influence. Britain had additional reasons for seeking Sukarno's removal, as his government was involved in an undeclared war with the neighbouring Federation of Malaya, a Commonwealth federation of former British colonies. Communists were purged from political, social, and military life, and the PKI itself was disbanded and banned. Mass killings began in October 1965, in the weeks following the coup attempt, and reached their peak over the remainder of the year before subsiding in the early months of 1966. They started in the capital, Jakarta, and spread to Central and East Java, and later Bali. Thousands of local vigilantes and Army units killed actual and alleged PKI members. Killings occurred across the country, with the most intense in the PKI strongholds of Central Java, East Java, Bali, and northern Sumatra. It is possible that over one million suspected PKI members and alleged communist sympathizers were imprisoned at one time or another. Sukarno's balancing act of "Nasakom" (nationalism, religion, and communism) unravelled. His most significant pillar of support, the PKI, was effectively eliminated by the other two pillars—the Army and political Islam; and the Army was on the way to gaining unchallenged power. In March 1967, Sukarno was stripped of his remaining authority by Indonesia's provisional parliament, and Suharto was named Acting President. In March 1968, Suharto was formally elected president. The killings are skipped over in most Indonesian history textbooks and have received little attention by Indonesians due to their suppression under the Suharto regime, as well as receiving little international attention. The search for satisfactory explanations for the scale and frenzy of the violence has challenged scholars from all ideological perspectives. The possibility of returning to similar upheavals is cited as a factor in the "New Order" administration's political conservatism and tight control of the political system. Vigilance and stigma against a perceived communist threat remained a hallmark of Suharto's doctrine, and it is still in force even today. Despite a consensus at the highest levels of the U.S. and British governments that it would be necessary "to liquidate Sukarno", as related in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memorandum from 1962, and the existence of extensive contacts between anti-communist army officers and the U.S. military establishment – training of over 1,200 officers, "including senior military figures", and providing weapons and economic assistance – the CIA denied active involvement in the killings. Declassified U.S. documents in 2017 revealed that the U.S. government had detailed knowledge of the mass killings from the beginning and was supportive of the actions of the Indonesian Army. U.S. complicity in the killings, which included providing extensive lists of PKI officials to Indonesian death squads, has previously been established by historians and journalists. A top-secret CIA report from 1968 stated that the massacres "rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s." It has been referred to as the "biggest US-backed genocide" as a result of US support. Background Support for Sukarno's presidency under his "Guided Democracy" depended on his forced and unstable "Nasakom" coalition between the military, religious groups, and communists. The rise in influence and increasing militancy of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), and Sukarno's support for it, was a serious concern for Muslims and the military, and tension grew steadily in the early and mid-1960s. The third-largest communist party in the world, the PKI had approximately 300,000 cadres and full membership of around two million. The party's assertive efforts to speed up land reform frightened those who controlled the land and threatened the social position of Muslim clerics. Sukarno required government employees to study his Nasakom principles as well as Marxist theory. He had met with Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China, and after this meeting had decided to create a militia, called a Fifth Force, which he intended to control personally. Sukarno ordered weapons from China to equip this Fifth Force. He declared in a speech that he favoured revolutionary groups whether they were nationalist, religious, or communist, stating, "I am a friend of the Communists because the Communists are revolutionary people." He said at a Non-Aligned Movement summit meeting in Cairo in October 1964 that his current purpose was to drive all of Indonesian politics to the left and thereby to neutralise the "reactionary" elements in the Army that could be dangerous for the revolution. Sukarno's international policies increasingly reflected his rhetoric. Sukarno hosted the Bandung Conference in 1955 (in Bandung, Indonesia). It was a conference of mostly former colonised countries throughout Asia and Africa (including China, North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). The conference was the predecessor to the Non-Aligned Movement and was not a communist convention. However, this was enough for the U.S. to be very suspicious of Sukarno and suspect him of deep communist .... Discover the Geoffrey B Robinson popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Geoffrey B Robinson books.